The Girl from Cassadaga
by vanillafluffy
Summary: Where does John go on his solo hunts? In 1994, he goes to Bike Week at Daytona, and finds an ally. During subsequent visits thru 2001, a relationship unfolds.


I don't own John Winchester, and I'm not making a profit from writing this. No harm, no foul, no lawyers, please!

This was written as a series of ficlets for mini-nanowrimo. (The 0000 headers were the original segments.) These and other ficlets form a series of interconnected stories that are the background for a much longer story I haven't even started writing yet, but meanwhile, I introduce Ms. Nancy McGill...

* * *

**The Girl from Cassadaga**

It's been more than a decade since Nancy McGill first went to to Daytona Beach for Bike Week. Her own motorcycle mama days are long past. The rumble of engines prompts a headache more than nostalgia, and she wonders what prompted her to come. Originally, her plans for this particular Saturday in March called for washing linens and hanging them to line-dry in the fresh air. Instead, at a quarter til nine, she'd found herself trekking over to Tallboy's, just in time to catch a ride with him to Daytona. When they'd arrived, she dismissed his attempts to arrange a time and place to meet up---which he'd forget anyway; by three o'clock, he'd be three sheets to the wind---and said she'd find her own way home. Never mind that it was near forty miles; it isn't going to be a problem. She knows it.

Nancy spends a chunk of the afternoon wandering around town, seeing how much has changed since the day she left Prince Not-So-Charming and came to read tarot cards in the city by the sea. The old storefront she moved into when she outgrew her little corner in the Herb Garden is a ladies' boutique now, a window full of trendy outfits where her lace and draperies once hung.

She's waiting; it's a familiar feeling. No telling for what, only that she's meant to be here, today, for some reason that will become plain soon enough.

It's about four when her intuition demands a beer, and she opens the door of the nearest bar as if it's where she meant to go all along. Never mind that it's Bike Week, and she gets whoops and catcalls at her appearance. Nancy learned at twenty not to let that stuff get to her, and she's gotten more tough since then, not less.

She dodges a few unsavory characters on the way to the bar, then she gets a beer, all right. A big, dark-haired guy turns away from the bar just as she gets there, knocking into her, and she winds up soaked, but hardly notices that at first. Because as soon as she comes into contact with him, the jolt of his very solid body and the brief touch of her hands against his shirt, she knows.

This is why she's here. She's just had a head-on collision with her destiny. Never mind that he's scruffy and unshaved, or that his old shirt is spattered with blood (Hell, this is Bike Week, you can hardly go fifty feet without some kind of ruckus breaking out. Half the guys in this bar probably have a DNA souvenir or two.). Although it is kind of interesting that the blood isn't quite human.

0000

She's standing there in shock, her shirt sodden with beer, and the guy is apologizing, she knows---but it all washes over her. Every time he swipes at her with the tiny bar rag in his big paw, she feels another wave of sensation that's one part sexual attraction and one part something else entirely. It's disorienting, and Nancy has to fight an urge to curl up against him like a limpet and just hang on.

When he offers to buy her a new shirt, she nods. Anything to get out of this bar she had no especial desire to be in in the first place...he's fine looking man, she thinks as he leads her to the nearest vendor (less than twenty feet from the bar entrance). Not pretty---she's never had a taste for pretty men---rugged. Yup, that's it. Rugged. Lots of thick, dark hair, just starting to grizzle at the temples, two days worth of beard...he's a few years older, she gets that much just from contact, but less than ten years, and at her age, well, the young ones may be appealing, but the older ones are more interesting.

He buys two shirts, one for her and one to replace his own unsavory garment. Identical shirts, and Nancy fights a strong feeling of vertigo. Animal magnetism, is her hazy thought. When she was a little kid, she'd heard the expression and thought of the little plastic dogs with magnets on the bottom...now, that's just what she feels like, as if she should arch up and kiss him, scour her cheeks against his whiskers...it's all she can do not to get ahead of herself.

She's got to do something quick; he's about to apologize one last time and disappear from her life, and the prospect is so alarming that Nancy sways on her feet, trying to stop him. He reaches out to steady her, and the strength in that one hand on her shoulder makes her feel weaker still. "You okay?"

"Low blood sugar," she manages to say, which might even be true, now that she thinks about it. And he responds as she hoped he would, and they can talk over lunch.

0000

When she offers him a bed in return for a ride home, he looks at her for a long moment, and takes his time thinking about it. "You don't know a damn thing about me," he points out, and Nancy shrugs. She hasn't told him what she does for a living; he wouldn't believe her if she did.

"I'll take my chances," she says, because although she knows full well he's a dangerous man in his own right, he's no danger to her. He's tired enough of cheap motel rooms and heartburn from lousy truck-stop food that he's willing to chance her hospitality---which secretly amuses Nancy. If she's a danger to him in any way, it's in seductive domesticity---old-fashioned home cooking and enthusiastic sex.

The drive that shouldn't take but an hour runs close to two and a half, thanks to the Bike Week traffic, but the heater in his old Impala works just fine, and she stays just awake enough to give him directions.

"You leave your door unlocked all the time?" he asks when she stumbles up the back steps and into the kitchen, legs stiff from the long drive.

"Sometimes," she says, trying to remember what she has in the way of leftovers, because lunch has worn off during the ride home. She steers him to the upstairs bathroom, where he can shower and get cleaned up while she fixes the speciality of the house. By the time her guest reappears, she's sprinted through a shower in the downstairs bath, changed into a crisp housedress with a fresh apron, and started heating leftovers in one pan and beating up a panful of biscuits.

The refrigerator yields a cold hamburger patty, some sausage, the tail-end of a ham, and a scant cupful of leftover barbecued beef. She stir-fries the lot and makes pan gravy to accompany it over biscuits. Nothing fancy, but judging by the way he digs into it, better than what he's been getting lately. She doesn't say anything, because she's got an inkling that his domestic situation has something tragic about it, and she doesn't want to get him riled up. At the same time, he doesn't have any steady woman in his life---and she's aware of how he's ignored his physical desires.

It turns out that there's a vast divide between what he wants and what he'll allow himself. His performance is perfunctory, bordering on mechanical. He works on her like she came with an instruction manual: Apply stimulation to points A and B for three to five minutes until subject moans, then transfer stimulus to point C until suitably lubricated. This is not going to work.

Nancy gets loose and pins him. He's not expecting that, otherwise she wouldn't stand a chance, but he goes motionless when she puts her mouth to work on him. "You don't have to---" he starts to say, and she just grins and licks him where it'll do him some good.

No, she doesn't have to, but that doesn't mean she's not going to. Cooking is only half the package deal.

0000

He returns later that year, in mid-November. This trip, her lover discovers how she makes her living. "A medium?" His lip curls with derision. He's sitting at the kitchen table, cleaning his fingernails with a Bowie knife that could take down a wildcat. "A two-bit hustler with a bunch of artsy-farsty New Age pretensions is more like it. You're a nice girl, Nancy, but don't think you're going to take me in with a load of parlor tricks and fakery."

She's been called worse, but she's not going to take that crap from him. "Oh? Well, you needn't think you can sit there and call me a liar in my own house, John Winchester. Let me just tell you a few things---" He's gone still when she called him by name, since all he admitted to before this was "John", and she's not going to give him a chance to claim she ran his car tags or some such malarkey.

Nancy plucks the knife from his grasp, and it's as much of a revelation as bedding him was, as much steel as he is. He's carried it for a lot of years, and soon she's telling him about events that happened a continent away during an undeclared war, incidents known only to him, and one or two others who linger only as shades of memory and names carved in black granite.

"Now then," she says calmly, when he sits there, his tanned face a sickly shade of pale, "are you convinced that I'm telling you the truth, or should I go on?"

"I believe you," he says, his voice hoarse. When she tries to hand back the knife, John shakes his head. "Keep it," he tells her. "I have enough ghosts."

0000

"What the hell are you doing?" Nancy asks when she awakens to find a duffle of guns and ammo spread across her bedroom rug and John looking as grim as she's ever seen him.

"Sit tight, I'll take care of it."

"Take care of what?" She needs strong coffee; has no idea what's going on---it's not even seven a.m. yet, and last night was...lively. Leave it to her to fall for a guy with paranoid issues and insomnia. This is his third visit, but it's the first time he's hauled all this artillery of his into her house.

"I don't want to scare you," he says with quiet intensity, "but you've got a big, bad pack of ghosts out in your back pasture."

Nancy groans. "Is that all?" She slumps into the nest of pillows. "Come back to bed, John. They're not gonna hurt anything. I can tell you without looking, it's misty out, and it'll be overcast all day today. I've seen 'em plenty of times, weather like this." She yawns. "Good day to stay in bed." She pats the empty stretch of mattress beside her enticingly.

John is staring at her, his mouth moving without sound, then he blurts, "You can't just let a whole flock of ghosts---"

"Leave them be, John." Truth be told, the first couple times she'd seen them, it had freaked her right on out. Her neighbor Tallboy explained it to her---he'd had the story from his grand-dad, who'd had it from a great-uncle---or something like that---but they were retreating Civil War troops. They'd picketed there back in the day, and she'd spent enough time watching them to see a routine to their actions---changing of the sentries, folks tending the handful of half-lame mounts and going about their business. They'd never come close to the house, or to her when she summoned the nerve to get close. "Not all ghosts are looking for a fight. These fellas sure ain't."

He doesn't look convinced, but he packs up his weaponry and rejoins her. Nancy distracts him as best she can.

0000

John Winchester is an educational experience unto himself. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth time he visits, he drafts her to cover his back when he goes after a vengeful spirit over in Ocala. Learning about haunts and poltergeists is really interesting; Nancy is awakened to a whole new realm of things she's been blind to, and after they've taken care of business and he's departed, she finds herself seeing more and more of it. Now that she knows what to look for, it's surprising how much weirdness is out there. And they aren't all broken-down things like those spirits in the groves out back of her place. Some of them are pretty nasty.

The next time he returns, she has a few stories of her own for him, and questions---she's kept a list as they occured to her. That first evening, after he's had two helpings of pot roast and bowl of rice pudding, Nancy starts asking him about the best way to determine what she's up against, about the different kinds of things out there, and the various ways to dispatch or dispell them.

He's patient with her, but she has a sense that he's not too pleased with the situation. Why not? It isn't like she's a mundane with no defenses. But he answers her questions at length, and they go off to bed, and spend a couple hours making up for lost time, and all is well.

Until 6 AM, when John drags her out of bed---not for breakfast, oh no, that would be too easy---to train.

"If you're gonna be any kind of hunter, you need to work on your skills. You've got the hippy-dippy fortuneteller part down just fine, but the first time you go up against anything with a real mean-on, you're gonna be toast. Drop and give me twenty."

This isn't John being playful. He hectors her for more than an hour, then sends her off to shower. The fact that he's done everything he asked her to do and hasn't even broken a sweat is just humiliating, she thinks, standing under the warm spray. He's eight years older than she is and in way better shape. Right now, her muscles are custard; she's sure that when she goes downstairs and tries to cook breakfast that when she strikes an egg against the side of the skillet, she'll crack before it does.

It turns out not to be a problem, because when she reaches the kitchen, there's John at the stove, scowling with concentration over a panful of something yellow and orange. (The egg carton on the counter beside the foil-wrapped block of Velveeta gives her a hint.) She's never had any indication before now that he even knew how a stove worked, but that's John for you: you're always learning something new.

0000

There's a red circle spray-painted on the side of the shed. That's appropriate, Nancy thinks grimly, because she's starting to see red.

"It's simple," John says for about the fifth time, and Nancy grinds her teeth as he flicks his hand and his knife sinks into the weathered wood at the center of the circle. He hands her a knife from the side table he's set up a dozen feet from the wall and she stares at the target with fierce concentration.

It's no consolation whan it hits dead center, right next to the hilt of John's blade, because it hits pommel first, bounces off and falls to the dirt. Again. They've been doing this for forty minutes now, and although she's hit the circle almost every time---she was a decent softball pitcher, back in the day---it hasn't stuck once. Not once.

"Nothing wrong with your aim," John allows, sounding forced, "but look---it's all in the wrist." He tosses another knife, without seeming to aim, and with a flash of steel, it embeds itself beside its brother.

Trying to imitate his casual fling, she misses the target completely.

"You're a hazard to good knives," John observes. Hmph. She has good knives in her kitchen, too, but knows better than to say such a thing, because damned if she's going to ruin her good Wusthofs throwing them around like a fool. He's got it in his head that she needs training, and when it comes to the exercise part of it, maybe he's right, but she's about over this nonsense.

When he stands close to her and tries to guide her arm, she's tense. "Move with me," he exhorts. "I know you can do that."

His tone of sexual innuendo is more annoying than seductive, given how irked she is already. It's on the tip of her tongue to say 'Fuck you, John Winchester', but she doesn't quite dare.

John stops, like he heard what she was thinking. Lets her go. "This isn't going to work," he says flatly, and her stomach drops. Does he mean this silly-ass lesson, or does he mean...them?

"Show me again, please, Big John?" Nancy beseeches him. The nickname dates back to one of their earliest evenings together, when the old Tennessee Ernie Ford song came on the radio while they were playing rummy, and it usually puts a twinkle in his eye. He looks at her for a long moment, sizing her up, and she works hard to project an aura of total commitment. She's committed to him, and if that means turning herself into Annie Oakley with cutlery, so be it.

"Watch my arm," he tells her at last. There are four knives (of a set of twelve) left on the side table, and he scoops them up. They're obviously as familiar to him as her knives are to her. He settles three of them between the fingers of his left hand, holds the fourth by its tip. "Like this." Target-thunk. He draws the next one, and Nancy is sure that if she tried to hold double-edged knives between her fingers that way, she'd be wearing band-aids for a week. Target-thunk. He makes it look so easy, but then, he's been doing this sort of thing for a very long time. Watching him...damn, he looks sexy and dangerous and all controlled power...target-thunk.

He hands her the last knife, and waits while she replays her mental image of how he did it. This time, the knife hits one of the hilts protruding from the wall, and is deflected.

"You would've had that one," John says, and goes to retrieve his deadly toys. "That's a good note to end on. We'll do more tomorrow."

0000

It's barely December, and her mail carrier has just handed Nancy a box wrapped in brown paper. She wasn't expecting anything, and she regards it with some bemusement. The postmark is smudged: Somewhere, Wisconsin. It's about the size of a shoebox, weight at least ten pounds, and dense. Nothing rattles. The address was inked with a thick-tipped black pen...that's John's writing, although the return address is T. E. Ford...she chuckles. Once in a while, Big John shows a fine sense of humor.

Carrying it into the kitchen, she wields a pair of scissors against an overkill of packing tape. Inside is---a shoebox. Even before opening it, she knows it no longer contains a pair of black athletic shoes, size 11 1/2 wide. There's a folded sheet of ruled notebook paper on top when she lifts the lid, the left edge still confetti where it was torn loose from its binding. The unsigned note reads, "Merry Christmas. Keep practicing."

The contents are wrapped in newspaper and cushioned with plastic grocery bags. The fine hairs on the back of Nancy's neck are prickling, and she's very careful as she unrolls the papers. Knives. Her own set of throwing knives. She shakes her head. Some men buy their girlfriends slutty lingerie. Or jewelry. Or home appliances. Hers favors deadly weapons. Lucky her. It's the thought that counts, she reminds herself. Looks at her gift. Sighs.

The wrapping is interesting---there are three separate sheets, not all from the same newspaper. One's from Indiana, the second from Ohio, the third from Minnesota. There are articles circled, probably what John's been doing lately. She rolls her eyes at his method of updating her. Some people send out holiday newsletters. Of course, this is John Winchester, so forget trying to peg him alongside Average Joe.

He may be driven and cryptic and the least sentimental man on the planet---at least it seems so at moments like this!---but Nancy recognizes this as John's version of a good, practical gift. This is what he believes she needs, and when she handles one of the streamlined projectiles, she acknowledges the craftmanship behind it. Some guy named Melvin or Myron...an old army buddy...hand-forged...quid pro quo for whatever John settled for him...

Not that she's ever tried to contact John between visits, but she could always send a present care of that preacher he's mentioned. Nancy grins, and wonders if a fifty-pound bag of rock salt would be an appropriate Christmas gift. What the heck, if nothing else, they could always use it to salt the church sidewalk when it snows.

0000

The floor lamp casts a 100-watt glow on the shirt Nancy is mending. Her needle eases through the worn plaid flannel, drawing together edges that have been rent and frayed. From time to time, she glances through to the dining room, where John stabs at the keyboard of her computer with two fingers, a scowl of concentration on his face. The machine is new since his last visit, and she's surprised that he seems to be more familiar with its use than she is.

He'd showed up on her doorstep late that afternoon, just in time for him to wash up for dinner. He had a story about another hunter he'd run into, some guy named Sweeney who had a knife that John had a feeling about. "Not that kind of feeling," he said when she'd teased him. "I recognized one of the symbols on the hilt."

Now, he's trying to translate the rest of the Japanese kanji from the knife's hilt from a rubbing he made on the back of a sales slip while Nancy does his laundry and sews up the evidence of her lover's hazardous profession. She's always thought that he comes here for sanctuary, although after five years of intermittent visits, she's equally inclined to wonder if it's the stolen domesticity he craves. She's careful not to cling or demand anything from him; she's patient, savoring what she does have instead of begging for more.

A sharp intake of breath from the other room---"That's it!" John says. He's studying the screen fixedly, and she settles the shirt on the ottoman and goes over to take a look. There's a scan of what looks to be an old sketch of a long knife. The background of the sketch is some kind of parchment that's yellowed with age. There's a heraldic device of some kind on the pommel of the weapon---a grotesque face of some kind---kanji engraved on one side of the hilt, and the piece of paper propped against the base of the monitor certainly looks like it's the same.

"Okay, so what is it?" she asks him. He's barely keeping some strong emotion in check, and there's goose-flesh on his forearms.

"That...is a sixteenth century Japanese knife." He sounds entirely too calm. "Do you know what that says?" John points to the characters on the hilt. He doesn't wait for her answer. "It names the sword-saint---literally considered to be a divinity when armed---who used this weapon to kill a number of demons who were terrorizing his province. It was forged to kill demons and consecrated for that purpose." He snarls at the monitor. "That stupid fucker doesn't know what he has---his father looted it from a dead Japanese during World War II. Steve thinks it's a goddamned samurai sword."

There's not much Nancy can say when he begins to swear inventively and at length, so she goes back into the living room and returns to her task. At least she can fix the shirt.

0000

The Impala backs up, turns, pulls away. Nancy watches until the brake-lights spark red as he avoids one of the ruts in the driveway, then returns her attention to the dishes in the sink. She's not going to see him for a long time, she knows. He's decided he isn't coming back, because he thinks it's too risky. Nancy is aware that he's trying to distance himself from her as much as he's trying to protect her. That's John's way; if he can't drive you away, he'll drive away.

John's a man with a lot on his mind. He always has been, but the more time she spends with him, the more she feels for him. Right now, he's tearing himself up about his youngest going off to college. On the rare occasions he's mentioned his boys, Sam's stubbornness has come up, and she's managed not to point out that the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. From what she's gathered, John's last contact with his birth family was when he enlisted in the Marines instead of taking a job his dad had for him at GM. A roaring argument later, John was on a bus to San Diego. She's read that Time is a spiral, not a straight line, and events like this help her believe it.

Nancy shakes her head, tucking muffin pans into the rack with cookie sheets and cutting boards. How many times did she invite him to bring his sons down for a visit? It looks like that's not going to happen; she had a feeling early on that it wouldn't, because for him to introduce her to them would raise too many questions he didn't want to answer. Him and his guilt, like having something going with her was a sign of weakness, an indication that his commitment to the hunt was faltering.

Gone. Maybe not for good, but for the next few years---of that she's pretty sure, but Nancy McGill isn't going to stop living her life just because she's alone. She has clients to read for, and the occasional ghost to bust, because John has taught her well. She's been studying Latin---parts of it bear a striking resemblance to her high school Spanish---and her herb garden is thriving. She'll miss him, she'll worry about him, but John Winchester will have to conquer his own demons.

The end.

Sort of.

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End file.
